Dylan Brooks | Words of the West

How Can I Help?

These are the four most important words in our toolset.

The question “How can I help?” isn’t just meant for customer service anymore. Nor is it restricted to our corporate identity. It resonates in every aspect of our lives.

Making ourselves useful never goes out of style. There is always more that can be done to make the world a better place.

But a spirit of utility goes further than promoting productivity. It can enrich our lives through the connections it builds, the goodwill it spawns and the positive outcomes it makes possible.

You see, every opportunity we come across is a learning experience. But we learn more when we’re active than when we’re passive. In other words, when we’re taking the initiative to provide assistance, we’re putting ourselves in position to learn by doing. We’re taking ourselves out of our comfort zone in order to improve our world, and gathering a bevy of actionable takeaways at the same time.

This is far better than sitting back and waiting for learning experiences to be given to us. While both assigned tasks and sporadic bouts of adversary can provide us powerful lessons to iterate and grow from, they are explicitly out of our control. So, if we learn exclusively this way, we train ourselves to be reactive instead of proactive.

And this means we sell ourselves short.

I say this because our society is built upon utility and connection. That is, the more useful and connected we are, the better off we will be.

With these constructs in place, why would we settle for only the opportunities we’re given? There are so many more opportunities to be had, if we only have the stones to seek them out. And it starts by offering to be useful.

This is a prime reason I commit to asking how I can help as often as I can. It’s not about boosting my ego or padding my resume. It’s about being a better person.

Indeed, offering assistance has helped me gain valuable knowledge beyond the scope of my job function in two separate careers. It’s helped me meet new people and endear myself to them quickly. And it’s made me a better family member, friend and colleague.

More importantly, it’s helped me become a better citizen. Twice in the past decade, I moved to a new region where a hardly knew a soul. But both times, a spirit of utility has helped me forge a foothold in my new home — and quickly.

It’s worked both ways. I learned how to build authentic and lasting connections with my new community simply by being helpful. In turn, I earned a reputation of being empathetic to the everyday trials and tribulations my new neighbors faced.

In fact, I believe the life I’ve built for myself is a direct result of my willingness to put myself out there and lend a hand.

But this principle doesn’t apply to just me. It can work for all of us.

Offering assistance at every turn can make us better employees. It can make us better spouses and parents. And it can make us better friends and neighbors.

Plus, when we all commit to this together, it can make our society more connected and conscientious. When we’ve all got each other’s backs, there’s no limit to what we can do.

It all starts with us. So, let’s use those four powerful words whenever we can.

How can I help?

Better Together

Recent weather has rocked our country to its core. Monster hurricanes recently packed a one-two punch in Texas and Florida, causing life-threatening flooding and property damage.

These images from these areas have been heartbreaking. As someone who has lived in both states, I’ve found it overwhelmingly sad to see streets turned rivers, homes turned to rubble and prosperity turned to widespread despair.

Through it all, I kept thinking one thing, “I wish there was more I could do to help.”

Turns out, I’m not alone.

You’ve probably heard the stories by now — the Cajun Navy taking to the streets of Houston to save lives of those threatened by rising waters. All the volunteers helping Florida get back on their feet. People helping people, regardless of color, creed or political affiliation.

This is how it should be. This is how we were meant to be. So why are we only this way in the wake of an Act of God?

If there’s one thing that upsets me more than seeing an image of a woman being rescued from her roof, life as she knows it permanently altered, it’s seeing that image juxtaposed against another one of Tiki-Torch bearing Neo-Nazis storming a college campus in Virginia. Both these scenes played out within weeks of each other — and that’s a bad look for America.

Yes, it certainly appears we’re embracing divisiveness over unity, and only changing our tune in times of crisis. This leaves an open question as to what type of people we really are.

Are we undercover bigots who feign a spirit of inclusivity in times of trouble to boost social acceptance? Or are we good-hearted people who lack the guts to stand up to the angry voices that threaten to tear us apart?

I hope to God the second answer is the correct one. But it doesn’t really matter.

As the saying goes, “The evil we must fear the most is the indifference of good-hearted people.”

We are all part of the problem — in part because we’re afraid to commit to being part of the solution.

As I think back 16 years ago, to blue September skies suddenly shrouded by smoke and fire in New York City, I don’t just think of the horrific scenes of those towers falling. I don’t just think of those images of people jumping from 79^th story windows, of people running from a cloud of rubble 200 feet high.

No, I think of what came after. Of the President addressing first responders through a bullhorn with the words, “The nation sends its love and compassion to all of you.” Of the country rallying to boost the spirits of New York and Washington — both of which had lost so much to an act of evil. Of strangers treating strangers with kindness and compassion, no matter their differences.

I wish to God that 9/11 had never happened. It will haunt me for the rest of my life.

But I also wish that spirit I saw in the months that followed would have stuck around.

After all, we’ve proven time and again that we can rally for each other when its needed most. But truthfully, unity always needed.

We owe it to those lost to 9/11, Katrina, Harvey, Irma —we owe it to all of them to be better. To put aside our differences and be as one, even after the smoke has cleared and the water recedes.

Most of all, we owe it to ourselves, and to our collective future. For it’s how we act between the storms, when the world isn’t watching, that will truly define our destiny.

So, let’s write that narrative. Together.

What’s Next?

Where do we go from here?

It’s a question we often consider. But not with the proper priority.

We tend to only think about our next move in the context of our last one. It’s a pattern that brings us stability and consistency. But it’s also one that can hold us back.

For while we learn the value of retrospection very early on in life, we fail to recognize that peering into the rearview mirror takes our eye off of the road ahead. And focusing too heavily on how we got to the point we’re at invites all types of white noise — Analysis Paralysis, Monday Morning Quarterbacking and The Blame Game.

None of these are productive or advantageous. And all of them shift our focus away from the more crucial task of determining what comes next.

Let’s take a look at a recent example of this disconnect. As Hurricane Harvey ravaged the Texas Gulf Coast — inundating Houston with unfathomable flooding — the major oil refineries in the region shut down. Within days, some gas stations in Dallas were covering their pumps with plastic bags; the holding tanks were dry, and no oil tankers were heading up Interstate 45 to save the day.

A full-fledged gas panic quickly took hold across the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Drivers rushed to the nearest open gas station, causing long lines and exhausting fuel supplies even further. (Having waited in one of these lines myself, I can only imagine what the Oil Crisis of 1973 must have been like in America.)

And this wasn’t just a Dallas event. Similar scenes could be found across the Lone Star State — in Austin, San Antonio, and even Lubbock.

As the panic hit a fever pitch, oil and gas industry experts took to the airwaves to assure Texans that there was no fuel shortage after all. A chorus of angry voices soon followed, with many of those voices blaming drivers for causing the entire situation by gassing up in droves.

They may have been right. But that’s beside the point.

You see, who we decide to collar with the blame — anxious drivers, price-sensitive gas station owners or the storm itself — is irrelevant. Regardless of the cause, the panic happened. So, it’s too late to go back and prevent it.

In other words, the train has already left the station.

So, what can we do? We can focus on what comes next.

In the case of the Texas Gas Panic, this might mean driving conscientiously, planning out short-term travel in terms of fuel demand and being willing to drive further and pay more in order to refuel. These actions can lessen the burden on the fuel industry while gas stations work to get supply levels back to normal.

In other situations, such as workplace setbacks, detailing what comes next could take a different form — trying a new strategy, being more amenable to change, or getting better at collaborating with others more.

The possibilities are endless. But one thing remains the same.

What happens next provides the biggest impact.

What comes next can change the world for the better. It can help cement our legacy. And it provides us the opportunity to innovate, learn and grow.

So, stop quibbling over how we got here. Where we’re going is far more important.

Overcoming Old

“I’m too old for this.”

That line is a hallmark of the 1987 blockbuster Lethal Weapon. In the movie, established Los Angeles Police Sergeant Roger Murtaugh finds himself partnered up with “loose cannon” Martin Riggs. Anytime Riggs’ reckless actions put the two of them in danger, Murtaugh blurts out those iconic five words (plus an expletive).

There are certainly many moments when this line finds its way into my life. Most recently, it popped into my head as I was walking across a college campus on a sizzling late summer evening.

To my left and right were undergraduate students a decade younger than me — guys in shorts and flip-flops and girls who could best be described as “scantily clad.” (As a classmate would later quip, “It seems like the price of fabric’s gone up since we were in school. Cause no one’s sporting it.”)

In the midst of it all, there I was — dressed in business attire and feeling very out of place.

It was an eerie feeling — one I’m sure anyone might feel on their first day of grad school. For despite our efforts to break down the barriers that come between us, age is still the Great Differentiator in our society. And feeling old is kind of like wearing a Scarlet Letter.

***

Why are age divisions a hallmark of our society? Because we were raised on them.

Literally.

All through grade school, we socialized and learned with peers who were our age. As we steamed past adolescence, our age provided us access to the driver’s seat, the voter’s booth and the bar. And as young adults, we quickly learned how age (masquerading as “experience”) plays a critical role in climbing the corporate ladder.

None of this is an accident. Our system of age-based division provides us structure. It presents us with goals. And it even rewards us for merit.

Still, in certain instances, it can make us stick out like a sore thumb.

Yes, our rigid age structure self-segregates our society. It limits our tolerance of cross-generational activities. And it makes us feel self-conscious when we’re “not in our lane.”

Simply put, it makes getting old no fun at all.

***

Now, I’m generally not one to rail against the cruelty of aging.

I don’t pine for days gone by, when life was more innocent and fun. I’ve fully embraced the changes that come with maturity and experience — changes both in abilities and responsibilities. My awareness of the latter has allowed me to progress through young adulthood gracefully. Perhaps too gracefully.

I’m not kidding. I jokingly refer to myself as a “42-Year-Old at Heart.” And my favorite song is Garth Brooks’ Much Too Young to Feel This Damn Old, which I listen to every year on my birthday.

So, no. Aging generally doesn’t bother me.

Yet, when the time and place is just right, my John Wayne façade crumbles. And there I am — sporting a button-up shirt and slacks, yet feeling as naked as Adam after he was banished from Eden.

Yes, it seems regardless of our disposition, getting old will eventually get to us.

***

So, what can we do to overcome this predicament? What can we do to stem the shame, self-loathing and decreased confidence that comes with being long in the tooth?

We can start by reminding ourselves that we belong. That we have a right to go about our business, pursue our dreams and live our lives, regardless of the crowd we might encounter along the way.

And if we still find ourselves in moments of doubt, we can remind ourselves that we have nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, the knowledge and experience we accrued should be celebrated. It lets us live a more enlightened life and have a bigger impact. And it lets us accomplish more while erring less.

You see, overcoming old is a power we all possess. We don’t need a journey to the fountain of youth or a Botox injection. We just need the mental fortitude to break with our age-obsessed society. The wherewithal to change the narrative from a glass half-empty to a glass half-full.

That’s something we should never be too old for.

Analysis Paralysis

Lock it up.

We’ve likely heard those words from an early age.

Whether we’re looking to protect our property or our own wellbeing, we recognize that we need to guard it behind some sort of resistant barrier. A lock. A passcode. Even a contraceptive.

And a lifetime of closely guarding all we’ve held dear has impacted our feelings about the word lock. It represents our White Knight, our silent protector.

Yet, there are times when that word can mean nothing but doom for us. Such as when machinery we’re using locks up. Or our brains do.

That’s right, we can sabotage our own hopes and dreams by putting our brains on lockdown. I’m not talking about the infamous “Brain Freeze” here — when we seem to act with an absence of thought. I’m talking about the opposite of that.

Namely, I’m talking about the dangers of Analysis Paralysis.

***

We are, by and large, thoughtful people. Our collective exuberance for learning has helped us innovate and organize over Millennia. It’s taken us from cave paintings to computer sciences, quintupled our average lifespan and even allowed us to systemize the passing of knowledge to new generations.

Thought is the engine that’s driven much of what we’ve created, and much of what we’ve destroyed. It’s been touted, both subtly and blatantly, as the must-have attribute in our society.

But the power of thought is not unlimited. It can turn our mind into a pretzel if we’re not careful.

You see, Analysis Paralysis is not just a catchy buzzword. It’s a real, debilitating condition we subject ourselves to, far too regularly.

How do I know? Because I find myself afflicted with it time and again.

Thinking is at the heart of everything I do. I try and learn something new every day, and as my Words of the West readers know, I write at least once a week. But for every moment I ponder something existential and profound, there’s another where I can’t decide what to eat for dinner.

It’s maddening — not only to myself, but also to my friends and family.

Why? Because Analysis Paralysis brings out a vicious cycle of annoying traits.

At first, there’s indecisiveness. While I ultimately do come to a decision, I then feel compelled to back it up with a convoluted logical argument. And finally, regret over the option I didn’t choose kicks in, and I spend hours playing the “What If” game.

By the time this cycle has run its course, I’ve expended a ton of unnecessary energy on a basic decision. It my daily brainpower is a finite resource, I’ve effectively spilled a large portion of it onto the pavement.

It’s sad, even shameful. But, I reckon I’m far from the only one to ever experience this.

***

So, who’s to blame for this onslaught of Analysis Paralysis?

Is it us? Our society?

Truth be told, it’s probably a little bit of both.

You see, our societal expectations are stringent and exacting. We value innovators and thought leaders — those who go the extra mile to expand their minds and horizons.

It takes a lot of work to go that extra mile. In particular, it requires recoding our brain to gather as much pertinent information as possible before making an assessment.

And once we get there, there’s really no turning back.

For all we talk about “flipping an off switch” in our brains or “going on vacation mode,” the reality is that we’re still running all the calculations with every decision we make — no matter where we make it.

Some of us can prioritize these decisions, tuning out the white noise for the basic ones in order to keep them simple.

Others of us cannot.

But, there is hope for those of us in this predicament. Hope that starts with awareness.

Awareness of the varying levels of gravity of the decisions we make.
Awareness of the debilitating effects of chronic overthinking.
Awareness of the benefits of “Letting It Ride” from time to time.

If we can get to this point of conscientiousness, our brains can run a new set of calculations. One that convinces us that choosing between tacos and burgers doesn’t need to be as exacting a process as pondering the meaning of life. One that lets us use our brainpower more efficiently. And one that allows us to preserve our sanity.

We owe it to ourselves, our loved ones and our society to get to this point — to eliminate Analysis Paralysis once and for all. It will make us happier. And it will make us better citizens.

Time to slay this beast. Let’s get started.

Analyst or Innovator?

When I was growing up, I loved baseball. I loved playing it. I loved watching it. But most of all, I loved checking out baseball statistics.

Even though I was no math whiz, my young mind recognized that those numbers I saw in the newspaper box scores were actually a barometer. A player who batted to a .330 average with 30 Home Runs and 100 Runs Batted In would be someone I’d want to see starting for my favorite team. One who batted .210 with 5 homers and 25 RBI would not.

Whenever I saw those guys with poor statistics in a box score, I responded with bemusement. Why would a team run a player out there who hadn’t proven he could hit?

Of course, I failed to consider the ancillary reasons for those low numbers. Maybe the player was known for his outstanding defense. Maybe he was anxious because his wife was due any day with their first child. Maybe he was suffering from colitis but trying to tough it out anyway.

These scenarios wouldn’t erase goose eggs in a box score. But they would put them into context.

In particular, they had the power to integrate the human element into an industry based on numerical benchmarks. And given baseball’s legacy of pageantry and tradition, this element was sorely needed.

***

Sadly, that human element is harder to find these days.

It’s long gone from baseball. Statisticians are now an integral part of the sport’s brain trust, and players are judged on obscure metrics like WAR, Exit Velocity, Launch Angle and Spin Rate. (Sometimes, when I tune in to a baseball broadcast, I feel like I’m watching cyborgs.)

But it’s disappeared from many other industries as well. Big data is in vogue and seemingly every decision out there comes from cold, hard numbers. A whole new class of employees spend their days looking at analytics and reporting to their bosses solely on those very same numbers. They might not know it, but these analysts are now the key cogs that define their employers’ strategies.

This all seems well and good on the surface. More young adults can now have access to corporate jobs that actually impact their employers’ strategies. And companies don’t have to gamble with profitability each time they change things up; the cold, hard data is within arm’s reach.

But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find the quandary.

***

We were never meant to take the human element out of the equation. Anyone who’s watched Star Trek knows that instinct and emotion are just as critical as logic in completing our mission.

On a high level, our love affair with data-based decision making excludes us from any growth opportunities that require breaking from the norm, or bending the rules. It sacrifices our independence of thought in favor of hard numbers, thereby compromising our integrity.

But on a more basic level, our all-in data approach has created a new class of professionals. A class that is as stuck in the mud as Joe Pesci was in My Cousin Vinny.

You see, it’s relatively easy to analyze data that’s already there. Assuming one has a certain level of specialization, it’s even a secure area to work in.

But this type of occupation doesn’t provide a great opportunity for growth. There’s no need to go beyond the numbers. After all, no one’s looking for us to do that.

***

We were meant for something greater. We weren’t meant to be analysts. We were meant to be innovators.

And while the world at large seems to be pulling in the other direction, we don’t have to follow suit.

We have more to contribute than the digits on our spreadsheets and the colored arrows on our charts. There are untold stories behind those trends and totals. Stories that tie the often-unpredictable course of human psychology to the concrete data we cultivate like corn on a Nebraska field.

We must tell those stories to tie everything together. We must tell these stories to forge a new way forward for a society that has doubled down on a solitary variable. We must tell these stories to lead.

This process might seem uncomfortable. Unsafe even.

That’s OK. Innovators never take the well-worn path.

But regardless of our apprehension, we owe it to ourselves to explore our true potential. We owe it to humanity to take that leap. We owe it to our future to make the right choice.

Analyst or innovator?

The answer should be clear.

All or Some?

Go for it all.

Think big.

Shoot for the stars.

We’ve all heard some version of these sayings throughout our lives.

Our society embellishes dreamers who become doers. It’s why we bestow fame, notoriety and power on our biggest achievers.

This is the reason we recognize Marissa Mayer, but not the engineers who have helped her innovate at both Google and Yahoo. (Unless one of them spews out sexist comments in a viral memo, that is.) It’s we recognize Derek Jeter, but not Mike Hessman. (Hessman is the all-time home run leader in minor league baseball.)

The message is clear. We must be somebody to be viewed as successful. Anything less means we’re irrelevant.

So, we all strive for fame, fortune and notoriety. We set our sights on titles such as CEO or VIP. We dream of “making it,” simply for the power and prestige that destination provides.

But we fail to consider is what life at the top is actually like.

You see, power is intoxicating. This is why history is filled with examples of both its use and misuse.

It’s quite something to have the ability to control both our own destiny and that of others. But this ability comes with significant side effects.

When we take the reins and ride into the spotlight, we sacrifice our anonymity. Our actions are heavily scrutinized. Our privacy is compromised. And our decisions leave a trail.

Whether we become the President of the United States or a musician with a bigtime recording deal, a basketball star or a chief executive, there is no more hiding from the world after we hit the bigtime. There is no way to turn off the attention our notoriety provides.

For try as we might to get away, there’s always someone there to keep us honest — whether it be a journalist on a beat, a paparazzi photographer or an astute social media user.

That scrutiny can be far-reaching. It can even extend to our families and even impact the way we live our lives.

This is the cost of power, fortune and fame. It’s a cost we often fail to consider until we’ve made it big. And by then it’s too late. The mansion with the pool might be nice, but having to sneak out the back entrance to run to the grocery store sure ain’t.

Is this really what we want? Not a chance.

And it brings us to the crux of our paradox:

We don’t actually want it all. We just want some of it.

Sure, we want the glory and the adulation. But we also crave the anonymity that allows us to reset our batteries and spend cherished time with our loved ones in peace.

This setup is perfect for the middleman role. For the undersecretary. For the vice president.

But those roles are harder and harder to come by these days, and many of the ones that remain are getting replaced by machines.

So, with no ready-made outlet to turn to, what should we do to satiate our ambition yet save our sanity?

We should look before we leap.

We should do our due diligence. We should consider the tradeoffs of the spotlight long before we shoot for it.

And critically, we should ask ourselves the following:

Is pursuing our dreams worth sacrificing life as we know it?

If the answer to this question is yes, we can proceed with eyes wide open. We can round the bend prepared for the cage-rattling hit that awaits on the other end. The world-rocker that will send us into a new reality that there’s no turning back from.

If the answer is no, we can stop chasing a dream that we find undesirable. We can instead strive to make the life we know, love and are comfortable with the best it can possibly be.

Now, neither of these answers are wrong. But only one will be right for us.

All or some? The choice is ours.

Who We Are

“I’ll just be Jules, Vincent.”

I love this line, which is from my favorite movie — Pulp Fiction.

It comes as gang enforcers Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega are eating breakfast at a coffee shop in Southern California. Noting an earlier near-death experience where he “saw God,” Jules tells Vincent that he aspires to leave the gangster life and “walk the earth.” After Vincent responds by calling him a bum, Jules uncorks those five powerful words.

It might seem strange that this line resonates with me the way it does. After all, it’s far from Shakespearean. It doesn’t even roll off the tongue.

Why does it strike such a chord? Because it gets real. Realer than we’re willing to get.

You see, when we describe who we are, we tend to use a ton of labels as identifiers. Our job, our ethnicity, our family name. Whether it’s ego talking or the realities of a culture built on the twin concepts of diversity and resumes, these labels dominate the discussion. They describe us, define us and even impact our behavior.

Our obsession with rising in stature — both professionally and socially — is fueled in part by our label-crazed culture. And our achievements are shrouded in the context of these labels.

But they don’t define who we are.

Strip all the labels away, and we still have something unique to contribute.

Our quirks, our habits, our intonations, our looks, our interests and hobbies — these attributes are geared toward our individuality. Sure, we might share some of them with relatives, friends, or even complete strangers. But ultimately, the combination of all these attributes makes us unique. It makes us 1 in 7 billion.

The decisions we make, the paths we choose to navigate life’s complexities — these all ought to be as unique as we are as well. But all too often, they get caught in the fray of our label obsession.

This is a reflection of human nature. After all, we are social beings. It’s totally normal to want to conform. It builds camaraderie and a shared community.

Even so, we must consider what we’re sacrificing in this exchange.

Can we do better for ourselves when it comes to the decisions we make? All too often, the answer is yes.

Now, I’m not saying we should all Walk the Earth without a rhyme or reason to it. That strategy is far from foolproof, even in a Hollywood script. (The fate of Jules Winnfield is intentionally left ambiguous in the film.)

That said, I do think we can use the decisions we make to show more of who we really are.

This shift might make us feel squeamish, but it’s worth fighting through the internal discomfort. Why? Because refocusing our internal compass around our individuality forces us to conquer the apprehensiveness of making a decision for ourselves, rather than the acceptance of the masses. It allows us to describe who we are through our actions, rather than our accolades.

Most of all, it leaves us happier and freer. Life is not like its eponymous board game. We each have our own path to follow. Chaining ourselves to the wagon trails others is masochistic and counterproductive.

So, let’s just be Jules. Or Pete. Or Vanessa. Or Cory, Danielle, Taylor, Dylan — you get the idea.

We don’t need more than that to express who we are.

Shifting Barriers

Barriers can divide us. But they should never define us.

In the summer of 1997, my family took a trip to Washington with my godparents and their son. While we walked the National Mall one late afternoon, my godfather noticed a lost backpack on a park bench.

Since it was the age before cell phones, we took the backpack to our hotel and called the number we found on its ID tag. This allowed us to return the backpack to its rightful owner — a very embarrassed congressional aide.

As a sign of gratitude, the aide arranged a private tour of the U.S. Capitol for us. We took the Congressional Subway from the senate office building to the Capitol itself and got a behind the scenes look at the both chambers of Congress.

Looking back now, 20 years later, this story seems even less real than it did in real time. It would be inconceivable today to pick up a lost backpack from a park bench, let alone bring it back to a hotel in order to locate its rightful owner. And of course, just about no one’s getting a behind-the-scene tour of the Capital these days.

The landscape of this story is frozen in the past, in the same way the old Western tales are eternally tied to a frontier that no longer exists. And while the advancement of technology has certainly played a part in altering our perspective, so have changes in the barriers around us.

***

I have a unique perspective on shifting barriers.

I was born in the fading shadow of the Iron Curtain. The Berlin Wall fell about a month before my second birthday, and the Cold War mentality everyone had lived with for a generation fell with it.

It was a new era. One filled with seemingly endless optimism.

That optimism flowed all the way down to elementary school classrooms. I remember learning about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement in Kindergarten. Although the March on Washington was already 30 years in the past by then, my teachers kept talking about how the future was brighter than ever. They kept mentioning that there would be more opportunities and fewer barriers in our way.

And this was largely true. There was plenty of prosperity and innovation in America during the 1990s. We had a budget surplus for a while, and we quickly integrated the Internet into our lifestyles. An era barricaded by conflict, fear and distrust crumbled, with friendship and reconciliation filling its void.

It seemed that divisiveness would permanently become a relic of the past. Then the Twin Towers fell.

As I struggled to pick up the pieces after 9/11 — my innocence shattered and my heart broken — I noticed something different going on around me. The barriers our society had spent a decade tearing down started to appear all over the place once again.

These new barriers were evident at airports, border checkpoints and sports arenas, of course. But you could also see them in more subtle areas — such as attitudes toward minorities or reactions to abandoned backpack on a park bench. As an era of suspicion took hold, the cultural connections we’d worked so hard to build faded to grayscale.

Although the initial shock and horror of America’s darkest day soon subsided, it quickly became clear that these new barriers were here for the long haul. I remember checking in for a flight in Rome in 2004, only to notice a military sharpshooter perched overhead. It was a terrifyingly normal sight — one that reflected how an initial fear of terrorism had evolved into a societal norm.

This is not to say there haven’t been some barrier-smashing changes over the past 15 years. The invention of the smartphone and the election of a black president are testament to that. But still, it’s clear that the openness of the 1990s is as much a relic of the past as the toy in the Cracker Jack box.

The tide is most certainly rolling in.

***

This all begs one big question:

Are barriers a bad thing?

Some would say the answer is a unilateral yes. But I’d beg them to reconsider.

You see, barriers do have their benefits. They can give us privacy in our bedrooms and bathrooms. Or keep convicts away from their potential victims. Or help us define which plot of land is ours.

These are all worthy causes for boundaries. Necessary ones for our well-being and survival. After all, there is a saying that goes, “Those who wish to abolish all barriers have never spent a night in the rain.”

Still, the act of building barriers can quickly become dangerous. And our actions over the past decade or so have certainly crossed that threshold.

For in our quest to block out the danger of our world, we’ve been building a wall around our heart. And spreading seeds of deceit and distrust throughout our society.

Those seeds have grown into weeds now. They’re causing the divisiveness, anger and angst running wild through our society. They’re slowly tearing our society apart.

It’s high time that we cut these weeds down.

Let’s take some responsibility for what we’re doing to ourselves. Let’s unchain our hearts and learn to trust each other again. Let’s accept hope and shun fear.

In short, let’s start building a more open future.

That’s a shift in barriers we can all get behind.

Journey or Destination?

Are we there yet?

It’s one of the more cliché images out there: The kid in the back seat of the car asking that question over and over.

This image serves as a maddening reminder — both of the impatience of children and the petulance of adults. For while we might hope our kids will embrace the journey, our actions belie that outcome.

Our society is built off of destinations. We both celebrate and incentivize weddings, graduations and job promotions. We shoot endlessly for notoriety and recognition. We fight as ferociously as lions to achieve, all so we can revel in the spoils of victory.

We pay little attention to the journey we take to get to these destinations; if anything, we consider it a nuisance that delays achievement of our goals.

So why should we expect our young, impressionable children to act any different on a long car ride? Why should we expect anything less than a culture of instant gratification as those children grow up and become Millennials and Gen Z-ers?

We should know better. All we have to do is look in the mirror.

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Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. If we can learn to embrace the journey we take to our destination, we’ll have a better example to set. And we’ll get more mileage out of the life we live.

But this requires us to do something terrifying: Stop and reflect.

Instead of only considering the next milestone, we should take a moment to consider where we are at a certain point in time. Then we need consider how we got to that point and how we hope to proceed.

This process will likely make us feel vulnerable; after all, our society has trained us specifically not to feel comfortable with this. But once we scale that mountain of apprehension, we’ll unlock something priceless.

You see, each journey we take tells its own story — one the connects origin and destination. These journeys are rarely linear; there are plenty twists and turns along the way.

And those wrinkles in our path mean everything. The hours of hard work we put in, the bouts of adversity we so bravely face — they help make us stronger, smarter and more determined. They allow us to experience life at its fullest and most real as we shoot for our hopes and dreams. And they make those achievements so much sweeter.

***

We must take the time to connect the dots. To understand that where we’re coming from and where we are matters as much as where we hope to go. To realize that our story is our own, and our journey is its conduit.

Yes, our journey is the key to living a more enlightened life — one that balances a sense of purpose with full awareness of the process that goes into it.

So, the next time you find yourself looking only at your next destination, stop and embrace your path toward it.

The journey matters. Enjoy the ride.

Author: Dylan Brooks